Welcome to our review of Chronos: Before the Ashes, a game where you gain in age every time you fall in battle.
Chronos: Before the Ashes is an atmospheric RPG that chronicles a hero’s lifelong quest to save their homeland from a great evil. Grow wiser, stronger, and more powerful as you explore the depths of the mysterious labyrinth. But beware, the labyrinth takes a heavy toll – each time your hero dies, they lose a year of their life!
A refreshing combination of Adventure Game elements and RPG mechanics. A variety of weapons, abilities, and powers are available to the player in the pursuit of their quest. Unique Aging Mechanic – Every time the player dies they age one year. Players must adapt to their advancing age as they progress throughout the game. You will begin your adventure young, nimble, and quick, and end your time in the game-wise and more attuned to magic.
Chronos: Before the Ashes presents itself as the whole deal, a rather intriguing approach to a game genre that I do not think has been done before. An idea so novel, the game just got my interests up and could not disappoint, right? Sadly, that was not the case.
I just can not feel like I love this game, I went in with higher than normal expectations but those got crushed rather quickly. I just could not get over the horrible game mechanics and the young boy supposedly having the highest speed and stamina yet such slow sword swings and so many times I missed… Almost a game-breaking default in my own personal opinion.
Allow me to explain a bit more, you do swing your sword in 2 ways, quick and “nimble” or slow and strong. Sadly neither are really fast and unless you lock on to the target, prepare to miss most of your attempts. The mechanics are killing my enjoyment here, sure, I wish they were faster or really just smoother. It often felt like I was getting purposely delayed, might it be the Stadia influence?
Also, everything else seems to be on the slower side of things, like running or dodging an incoming attack. Half of the time, I still got hit and suffered major damage, often leading to my demise and gaining in age. That was about the only mechanic that actually survived the onslaught of bad experiences so far. Once I hit the age of 20, I was given three choices, I picked increased strength. I really loved this part, the better you are at the game, the younger you will be.
I did also appreciate the special powers like that first time I swung my sword and flames appeared for added damage, that was plain awesome and sadly not representative for the rest of my experience. I really wish it was because I really want to like this game, but take for example the lack of guidance, another pet peeve of mine.
Sure, you can easily figure out where to go, but once I got too close to fire, it ended up in me getting killed. I also got creamed when I decided to randomly swing my sword at a giant enemy, it just looked like I was going to have to fight him, but nope, instant death and revival at the previous save point was my faith, a year older, yet not much wiser in my humble opinion.
Next up, that same giant followed me once I got back in. On my way to escape from him, I had to beat a smaller enemy, locked on to him, but he still got a hit in which struck me back a little. Then the giant managed to punch me into yet another year of experience. A lot of frustration really. Not forgetting I got ambushed by some enemies out of nowhere because they were “black” and pretty much hiding in the dark. It May have been a bug, I did see black parts of ground where they seemed out of place as well…
In short, many things went wrong and my experience playing this one on Stadia was not the best either. I had a lot of lag and skipped frames with this one, despite my bandwidth being top-notch between 65 and 80 down and a whopping 20+ upload when playing. I really hated the parts and bits where I felt like I was taking damage due to the lag or the awkward movements. This was not my best experience so far on Google Stadia…
In conclusion, Chronos: Before the Ashes had so much appeal but fell short big time. I wish it did not disappoint me so much, I just loved the idea but I guess an idea alone can not save a game from being bad…
